“Improving comfort and reducing winter bills”: the first social housing residence in Antigone in Montpellier is to be renovated, 40 years later

Elus et responsables se sont retrouvés sur la place du Nombre d’Or. MIDI LIBRE – DORIAN CAYUELA

La résidence du Nombre d’Or, située sur la place du même nom, marquait l’apparition du logement social dans le quartier, en 1984.
Ses 275 logements vont être réhabilités.

How could it be otherwise ? In the photos exhibited at Place du Nombre d’Or, the first earthworks in Antigone, Georges Frêche, the builder mayor, talks with Ricardo Bofill, the Catalan architect, and Paul Quilès, Minister of Urban Planning who came to inaugurate this district of ancient inspiration in 1984.

Forty years later, the current mayor, Michaël Delafosse, was delighted with the way in which this district had evolved, with “this large 1.5 km pedestrian mall and its underground cars”. “If another mayor had been elected in 1977, a two-lane ramp would have been built to serve the polygon”, he recalled.

“At the Nombre d’Or residence, 275 social housing units were built 300 meters from the Comédie, and not at the very end of town”, he emphasized. And this from 1984, twenty years before the SRU law which required municipalities to build a certain percentage of HLM…

38 000 € of renovation per dwelling

At 14 place du Nombre d’Or, social housing will soon be renovated, particularly in terms of windows and heating. Objective: "improve comfort in summer and reduce bills in winter", the mayor summarized.

Preceded by a long dialogue with the Architect of the Buildings of France, the work, which will extend until 2026, will cost 10.6 million euros, or 38,000 euros per dwelling.

This Friday, Michèle Rossignol, a tenant in the Nombre d'Or residence, confided her great joy at having lived there for twenty years. “I'm 80 years old and I came to retire, she explained. I live on the 6th floor, under the roof, and I wouldn't change it for the world. As soon as we go out, we can walk around and do our shopping."

The opening of the neighborhood to the Polygone, enacted by Raymond Dugrand, Georges Frêche's deputy mayor for urban planning in 1998, helped bring it closer to the city center.

8,000 inhabitants today in Antigone

“The renovations do not impact the amount of rents”, specified Michel Calvo, president of Habitat Social en Occitanie. “The same curtains, blackout and insulating, will be installed in all apartments”.

He welcomed the date of this anniversary. It is taking place on the eve of the 84th congress of the Social Union for Housing, which will bring together nearly 23,000 participants in Montpellier, from Tuesday to Thursday.

As for Antigone, it acquired the remarkable contemporary architecture label in 2018. It is now home to 8,000 residents on 500,000 m2.

The recent closure of Rue Léon Blum to car traffic allows the district to regain the pedestrian vocation dear to Ricardo Bofill, who died in 2022. Michaël Delafosse has already set the milestone next: develop a pedestrian connection with the Esplanade and the Comédie.

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